UK High Court overturns conviction for Twitter joke

Defendant tweeted about blowing up airport if not reopened in time for flight.

Paul Chambers, the man who was found guilty of sending a menacing tweet in 2010, has won his High Court appeal against conviction, and has been acquitted of the crime.

Back In January 2010, Chambers joked that he would blow up Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire airport if it was not reopened in time for him to travel to Northern Ireland to see a friend.

"Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed," his infamous tweet read. "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I am blowing the airport sky high!"

A week later, he was arrested by anti-terror police for making a bomb threat. In May 2010, the Doncaster magistrates court found him guilty "of sending, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message of a menacing character." He was fined and lost his job.

After a lengthy appeal process, Chambers has finally been acquitted. In the judgement document, the high court said, "the appeal against conviction will be allowed on the basis that this tweet did not constitute or include a message of a menacing character; we cannot usefully take this aspect of the appeal further."

The case was followed by a number of celebrities, who offered their congratulations on Twitter. Al Murray said, "No fresh trial. Doncaster got it wrong. Colossal relief here in court. Short and sweet." Stephen Fry wrote, "complete vindication and victory for Paul Chambers in #twitterjoketrial."

Loz Kaye, leader of the Pirate Party UK said, "I am happy that this long running nightmare is over for Paul. But this case should never have gone this far, it has been a huge waste of police and court time. Today's verdict is a win for common sense as much as freedom of speech.

"Despite finally arriving at this positive result, the chilling effect on freedom of expression remains. It is time to support free speech and review the Communications Act. The law is clearly broken when a person can be jailed for light-hearted comments on social media."

48 Reader Comments

Meh, I kind of agree with the police investigating, although I'm not sure he needed to be arrested. Maybe this is an American attitude talking, but you don't joke about stuff like that. Not after 9/11. It sucks that he got in trouble and lost his job because of a joke, but it was, in my opinion, in poor taste. Remember what happened at the Dark Knight Rises premier in Colorado? All the experts now say that the gunman must have been a very troubled person inside to do such a thing, and that signs could have and should have been appearing before the incident. I know this happened before the premier, but I can't say I blame the authorities for trying to be proactive when someone mentions blowing up an airport. What if that was the sign that they ignored? Can you imagine the public outcry if nothing was done and he actually had? What a sh*tstorm.

I understand that you might be frustrated about delays and changes to travel plans, but have some eloquence and think up something intelligent instead of just joking about blowing things up. If you do think that kind of joke is funny, be prepared to have the police knocking on your door.

Meh, I kind of agree with the police investigating, although I'm not sure he needed to be arrested. Maybe this is an American attitude talking, but you don't joke about stuff like that. Not after 9/11.

Yeah, that's an American thing (if not just a thing for paranoid individuals). Also, do you really think the entire world has to change it's behaviour to paranoid just because of a single terrorist attack 10 years ago? 9/11 has no bearing on this case whatsoever

Meh, I kind of agree with the police investigating, although I'm not sure he needed to be arrested. Maybe this is an American attitude talking, but you don't joke about stuff like that. Not after 9/11. It sucks that he got in trouble and lost his job because of a joke, but it was, in my opinion, in poor taste. Remember what happened at the Dark Knight Rises premier in Colorado? All the experts now say that the gunman must have been a very troubled person inside to do such a thing, and that signs could have and should have been appearing before the incident. I know this happened before the premier, but I can't say I blame the authorities for trying to be proactive when someone mentions blowing up an airport. What if that was the sign that they ignored? Can you imagine the public outcry if nothing was done and he actually had? What a sh*tstorm.

I understand that you might be frustrated about delays and changes to travel plans, but have some eloquence and think up something intelligent instead of just joking about blowing things up. If you do think it's funny, be prepared to have the police knocking on your door.

What does the Dark Knight Rises premiere have to do with a guy making a joke on twitter? Nothing at all. Thinking like that ends up getting us all micro-chipped and stuck being scanned everywhere we go. Unfortunately some people do things like shoot-up movie premieres, and usually the guys who do stuff like that don't tell anyone about it beforehand. A guy making a joke on twitter about blowing up an airport if his vacation gets ruined should take no more than 30 minutes of investigative work by the police to determine if he was serious or not.

I can't say I blame the authorities for trying to be proactive when someone mentions blowing up an airport.

The authorities did nothing of the sort. They were not proactive in raising defenses at the airport, because they knew it wasn't serious enough to warrant escalating security. They only came after him to judge him for his potentially threatening speech that they had already determined wasn't worthy enough to fear.

Meh, I kind of agree with the police investigating, although I'm not sure he needed to be arrested. Maybe this is an American attitude talking, but you don't joke about stuff like that. Not after 9/11. It sucks that he got in trouble and lost his job because of a joke, but it was, in my opinion, in poor taste. Remember what happened at the Dark Knight Rises premier in Colorado? All the experts now say that the gunman must have been a very troubled person inside to do such a thing, and that signs could have and should have been appearing before the incident. I know this happened before the premier, but I can't say I blame the authorities for trying to be proactive when someone mentions blowing up an airport. What if that was the sign that they ignored? Can you imagine the public outcry if nothing was done and he actually had? What a sh*tstorm.

I understand that you might be frustrated about delays and changes to travel plans, but have some eloquence and think up something intelligent instead of just joking about blowing things up. If you do think it's funny, be prepared to have the police knocking on your door.

^ a true testament to how well propaganda has worked here in the US since 9/11. Arresting this man here would be a direct and obvious violation of the first amendment.

I completely disagree chipmunk. Starting off with "Crap", continuing with "get your shit together" and ending with "sky high" clearly shows he joking.

This whole thing was insane. Poor taste or not, we should be allowed to make jokes. The fear of acts of terrorism should not take away our right to free speech. You are wrong.

Freedom of speech isn't the right to make only jokes that are agreeable. It is the right to make any jokes. Even about killing people, or blowing up airports.

My thoughts exactly. If the fear of terrorism begins affecting and eroding our basic rights, then terrorism is winning. At the most this should have been investigated (cursory) and the case dropped. It was ludicrous they took it so far.

The guy was a bit stupid for posting the message, but glad he was let off. Shame we have to put up with yet another Stephen Fry opinion (The male version of Carol Vorderman - talking down to the masses). I'm surprised it took this long to be honest, shows how slow the legal system is here in the UK.

Meh, I kind of agree with the police investigating, although I'm not sure he needed to be arrested.

Here's the problem: the police did investigate, determined that the likelihood of it being a genuine threat was very low, but passed it on to the Crown Prosecution Service anyway. It was the CPS that decided to have him arrested, despite the opinion of the police.

The comment was arguably in poor taste; that's going to be a subjective thing, no reason to argue about it.

The police should investigate; IMO, they actually did right. If the guy doesn't have access to explosives, and hasn't recently purchased a bunch of fertilizer and whatnot, then drop it. If he has, then maybe he's worth bring in to question.

The CPS thing, I have a vague recollection the PD had to report it, which isn't unreasonable; the CPS may be aware of things a local PD aren't.

It went sideways, IMO, when the CPS arrested him and it took two years for someone with relevant authority to realize the guy was just blowing steam.

Not much to say here that everyone else hasn't already said. I think the joke was in poor taste. And also not that clever - could have mentioned something related to Robin Hood. Still, not a reason to be arrested. Especially since the cops already had determined it wasn't real.

... Remember what happened at the Dark Knight Rises premier in Colorado? All the experts now say that the gunman must have been a very troubled person inside to do such a thing, and that signs could have and should have been appearing before the incident. I know this happened before the premier, but I can't say I blame the authorities for trying to be proactive when someone mentions blowing up an airport. What if that was the sign that they ignored? Can you imagine the public outcry if nothing was done and he actually had? What a sh*tstorm.

It's easy to make postdictions about what constitutes a sign. The sensitivity may be good, but I'm guessing the specificity is for shit.

Wow, you guys are pricks. I straight up said they shouldn't have arrested the guy and I'm saying now that he didn't deserve the trial, conviction, or the fines. All I was trying to say is if you say on a public forum that you want to blow something up, I have no problem with the cops asking you a few questions.

That doesn't mean I want the cops to microchip you, that doesn't mean that they can make you take back what you said, and that certainly doesn't mean I want jokes to be illegal.. all I'm saying is that if you demonstrate a time (a week later), motive (your vacation being ruined), and intent ("I'm going to") to possibly do something horrific, then I would be angry if somebody DIDN'T ask you a few questions. They don't need to arrest you, they don't need to pull you out of your home in your bath robe, and they don't need to try you.. but they should at least investigate a little. You can say whatever you want, blowing up public places like airport terminals is not a joke.

Meh, I kind of agree with the police investigating, although I'm not sure he needed to be arrested. Maybe this is an American attitude talking, but you don't joke about stuff like that. Not after 9/11. It sucks that he got in trouble and lost his job because of a joke, but it was, in my opinion, in poor taste. Remember what happened at the Dark Knight Rises premier in Colorado? All the experts now say that the gunman must have been a very troubled person inside to do such a thing, and that signs could have and should have been appearing before the incident. I know this happened before the premier, but I can't say I blame the authorities for trying to be proactive when someone mentions blowing up an airport. What if that was the sign that they ignored? Can you imagine the public outcry if nothing was done and he actually had? What a sh*tstorm.

I understand that you might be frustrated about delays and changes to travel plans, but have some eloquence and think up something intelligent instead of just joking about blowing things up. If you do think that kind of joke is funny, be prepared to have the police knocking on your door.

Of course, they should have investigated it. The problem comes when they discovered that it wasn't a threat but still decided to press charges anyway. If the outcome of the investigation doesn't have an effect on the decision to prosecute then why do they even need an investigation? May as well just charge people without doing any investigating/thinking/research.

I think you always have to consider your audience. If you're among friends or performing as a stand-up comedian, feel free to make jokes about blowing up airports. When the entire internet-connected world is your audience, you might want to consider how well that joke would go over if you dropped it in a South Yorkshire police station.

I think you always have to consider your audience. If you're among friends or performing as a stand-up comedian, feel free to make jokes about blowing up airports. When the entire internet-connected world is your audience, you might want to consider how well that joke would go over if you dropped it in a South Yorkshire police station.

And it is up to the discretion of the audience to determine what is the proper way to react to different things. Even if you made the joke in the police station, sure you've given the police a reason to give you a hard time, but even they should have eventually realized it was a joke. The problem was, the police recognized it was a joke, but due to some slip-ups up along the chain of command, somebody didn't and that got the guy arrested.

^ a true testament to how well propaganda has worked here in the US since 9/11. Arresting this man here would be a direct and obvious violation of the first amendment.

For some reason, I have doubts that an American court would have reached the same conclusion.

It seems that I hear of someone being charged with making "terroristic threats" on a regular basis. It seems like a nice add-on charge to almost any crime these days.

Actually that's what they were originally going to try and charge him with, making bomb threats. After a while though they realised they couldn't do so and dug up the Communications Act, which has only been used (iirc) once for something similar to this situation since it was enacted

Wow, you guys are pricks. I straight up said they shouldn't have arrested the guy and I'm saying now that he didn't deserve the trial, conviction, or the fines. All I was trying to say is if you say on a public forum that you want to blow something up, I have no problem with the cops asking you a few questions.

That doesn't mean I want the cops to microchip you, that doesn't mean that they can make you take back what you said, and that certainly doesn't mean I want jokes to be illegal.. all I'm saying is that if you demonstrate a time (a week later), motive (your vacation being ruined), and intent ("I'm going to") to possibly do something horrific, then I would be angry if somebody DIDN'T ask you a few questions. They don't need to arrest you, they don't need to pull you out of your home in your bath robe, and they don't need to try you.. but they should at least investigate a little. You can say whatever you want, blowing up public places like airport terminals is not a joke.

And that's what I'm objecting to, this was clearly a joke (something even the police recognised without having to question him) and not a serious terrorist threat. Also you were the one bringing in 9/11 and the Dark Knight Shootings, which is just a ludicrous parallel to try and draw, and blows what happened here way out of proportion. It's the kind of logic that the CPS would have used in justifying the prosecution

Meh, I kind of agree with the police investigating, although I'm not sure he needed to be arrested.

Here's the problem: the police did investigate, determined that the likelihood of it being a genuine threat was very low, but passed it on to the Crown Prosecution Service anyway. It was the CPS that decided to have him arrested, despite the opinion of the police.

Which might indicate someone in the CPS felt they needed to make an example out of him for his "novel" use of Twitter. Situations where prosecution tries to make an example out of a suspect often ends with the prosecution looking like a bunch of assholes. Kind of like this situation.

I completely disagree chipmunk. Starting off with "Crap", continuing with "get your shit together" and ending with "sky high" clearly shows he joking.

This whole thing was insane. Poor taste or not, we should be allowed to make jokes. The fear of acts of terrorism should not take away our right to free speech. You are wrong.

Freedom of speech isn't the right to make only jokes that are agreeable. It is the right to make any jokes. Even about killing people, or blowing up airports.

Text based communication lacks the subtleties and nuances of tone and inflection and mannerisms that voice and face to face communication has.

Additionally there is no way to gauge the conext of the comment from a single Twitter post. So acting on the accord that it might be a real threat is justified.

I can see it as a joke - but I am (as you are) seeing it in hindsight through a news article with lots of conjecture surrounding the statement. So it's easy to dismiss it as a joke.

I can't speak for UK Law - but here in the States - people constantly get the meaning of "freedom of speech" as guaranteed under the First Ammendment wrong. (go look it up if you wnat a definition - it's all over the Internet)

But in the US - our Right to Free Speech is not absolute and is limited and only applies under specific contexts.

For example - it is in fact illegal in the US to encite panic without verifiable cause in public locations (such as yelling fire in a crowded movie theater without there actually being a fire present).

So in the US the cops would have been within their right to investigate - question - arrest (if needed) - charge and convict Paul Chambers based on his statement (irregardless of the 9/11 acts).

And he most likely would not have won his appeal based on "he should be allowed to say what ever the hell he wants to".

Was the Airport back up and running by the time of his flight 1.5 weeks later ?

If it was not not - then would he have acted on his statement - we don't know.

This is nothing short of kids calling a public school and issuing a "bomb-threat" for fun - it was a joke and no bomb was ever going to come from it - they were joking around - havgin fun - but guess what they would stil be charged - arrested and probably convicted.

And as as some have mentioned - it's not like he said it to his local friends hanging out at a pizza joint over a beer and food - he pasted it on the Internet for the entire world to see.

Paul Chambers tweets (in a somewhat joking manner about blowing up an airport) he is investigated, arrested and convicted. We can assume that little other terrorist activity was found on him.

The underwear bomber, buys a ticket with cash, has no baggage, has known ties to terrorists, his father has been warning authorities prior that he may be doing something, and yet we ignore all that and let him board the plane.

Text based communication lacks the subtleties and nuances of tone and inflection and mannerisms that voice and face to face communication has.

Additionally there is no way to gauge the conext of the comment from a single Twitter post. So acting on the accord that it might be a real threat is justified.

I can see it as a joke - but I am (as you are) seeing it in hindsight through a news article with lots of conjecture surrounding the statement. So it's easy to dismiss it as a joke.

I can't speak for UK Law - but here in the States - people constantly get the meaning of "freedom of speech" as guaranteed under the First Ammendment wrong. (go look it up if you wnat a definition - it's all over the Internet)

But in the US - our Right to Free Speech is not absolute and is limited and only applies under specific contexts.

For example - it is in fact illegal in the US to encite panic without verifiable cause in public locations (such as yelling fire in a crowded movie theater without there actually being a fire present).

So in the US the cops would have been within their right to investigate - question - arrest (if needed) - charge and convict Paul Chambers based on his statement (irregardless of the 9/11 acts).

And he most likely would not have won his appeal based on "he should be allowed to say what ever the hell he wants to".

Was the Airport back up and running by the time of his flight 1.5 weeks later ?

If it was not not - then would he have acted on his statement - we don't know.

This is nothing short of kids calling a public school and issuing a "bomb-threat" for fun - it was a joke and no bomb was ever going to come from it - they were joking around - havgin fun - but guess what they would stil be charged - arrested and probably convicted.

And as as some have mentioned - it's not like he said it to his local friends hanging out at a pizza joint over a beer and food - he pasted it on the Internet for the entire world to see.

Actions have different consequences on that scale.

He was wrong to do what he did in the manner in which he did it.

On the contrary, criminal conviction in the US generally requires "intent" to commit the crime. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater as a joke is illegal because the intent is still to cause a dangerous panic. The same applies to calling in a bomb threat. There is no way to argue that a reasonable person would expect that to result in anything but a panic; indeed the entire point of the "joke" is lost if it didn't. Without the intent to cause a panic, the act itself is not illegal. Someone who legitimately thought there was a fire or a bomb for a reasonable reason would not be culpable for calling out a warning, regardless of if they ultimately turned out to be wrong.

In contrast, offhand threats of violence as an expression of frustration with no actual intent to carry them through are common in modern culture. How many times have you heard someone say "I'm going to kill him!" over a simple annoyance? Thus, it is entirely possible to argue that a reasonable person would not expect their utterance to incite fear or otherwise be seen as actually threatening, removing the required intent for culpability.

It is true that text-based mediums remove the general context clues that denote the level of seriousness in a statement, so it could be expected that law enforcement might take an interest in the statement and investigate (that level of police attention being practically punishment enough for the unthinking statement). However, absent any other evidence that the individual was likely to actually follow through on his threat (previous history of instability and violence, evidence of actual preparation to commit the threatened act, etc.), it would be almost impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they intended anything beyond simply venting frustration.

So it is technically accurate that, in the US, their appeal probably would not be won based on "he should be allowed to say what ever the hell he wants to," because that is indeed not a proper interpretation of the First Amendment. Their appeal would be won simply on lack of required evidence to support a conviction for the crime.

Meh, I kind of agree with the police investigating, although I'm not sure he needed to be arrested. Maybe this is an American attitude talking, but you don't joke about stuff like that. Not after 9/11. It sucks that he got in trouble and lost his job because of a joke, but it was, in my opinion, in poor taste. Remember what happened at the Dark Knight Rises premier in Colorado? All the experts now say that the gunman must have been a very troubled person inside to do such a thing, and that signs could have and should have been appearing before the incident. I know this happened before the premier, but I can't say I blame the authorities for trying to be proactive when someone mentions blowing up an airport. What if that was the sign that they ignored? Can you imagine the public outcry if nothing was done and he actually had? What a sh*tstorm.

I understand that you might be frustrated about delays and changes to travel plans, but have some eloquence and think up something intelligent instead of just joking about blowing things up. If you do think that kind of joke is funny, be prepared to have the police knocking on your door.

It should take about 10 seconds of reflection to realize that someone threatening to blow up an airport because they want to use it for travel is making a joke, unless you completely lack any basic reasoning skills, which apparently a large portion of American voters do.